Fifty Says the Rooster Wins
by resplendentSILVER
Summary: In which poultry are given steroids, Tyki is in desperate need of painkillers, Lulubell awakens China, the kitchen floor and various utensils are ruined, and David is very, very informative. No, really.


(All characters belong to Hoshino Katsura. Or Katsura Hoshino, whichever you prefer.)

A very strange sight met Tyki's eyes when he walked into the kitchen that oh-so-fateful morning. Or, well, ALMOST walked in, as the actual passageway inside the kitchen itself was being barricaded very nicely by three separate masses of human flesh.

Knowing from prodigious and rather unnecessary amounts of past experience that you couldn't possibly make Road or the twins stand still if you threatened them with freaking FLAMETHROWERS...in both hands!, it was only a given that he was naturally very interested to know just what was on the kitchen floor that had all three so thoroughly enthralled. Craning his neck a bit over their heads, it wasn't long before said item in question became visible to him. Tyki froze instantly.

"Err...." He cleared his throat in an extremely delicate and polite and refined and civilized manner on such a level of sophistication that the twins would never manage in the Earl's lifetime and that was saying something, those brats, and no he wasn't being biased or anything, darn it, "What's going on?"

The younger Noahs must have been truly fascinated (and he couldn't blame them), because it was an entire two minutes (oh, a new record for how long the twins could keep quiet!) before David finally spoke up. "No idea", he answered, which told Tyki a whole lot, enough to fill annals and textbooks and libraries and several generations of Bookmen, seriously. "Jasdero woke us both up saying the chicken was gone, and then Road heard something break downstairs, so we ran down here and found...this. They've been at it for at least fourteen minutes now."

At which point a loud yowl split the air and all four cringed in varying degrees of intensity as Jasdero's favourite platter was promptly reduced to mere fragments on the floor. Jasdero took one look at the pathetic ring of ruined pieces and immediately let out an even more pathetic whimper, somewhat resembling that of a small, three-legged puppy.

Who had been abandoned.

In Russia.

And then kicked.

In the face.

David aimed a cuff at his brother's ear but missed in spectacular fashion and hit Tyki between the eyes instead, as his gaze was still completely fixated upon the scene unfolding upon the floor.

One of the participants in this scene just so happened to be Jasdevi's chicken, leaping, scattering feathers all over the place, crowing insanely and wings aflutter, raking the floor that the akuma maids had cleaned only last night (one stood off to the side, weeping melodramatically) with those three-inch long talons that Tyki could've sworn were clear evidence that Jasdero was feeding the bird steroids. Every night. Which would also explain the reason why he was always woken at five in the morning by inhuman screaming coming from that particular direction, but he digressed.

The other contender, lunging at the poultry's neck in between dodging the quick jabs of its beak was Lulubell's cat form, hissing and spitting madly, claws fully extended but still less than half the length of her adversary's. Which was mildly creepy.

"She does realize she can just transform into something different and kick its tail, right?"

"Shut it, Tickie", David rejoined, before turning to Jasdero. "Twenty says the rooster wins."

"Oh, come on", Road finally piped up, casting a disapproving eye on the pair, who were now sporting grins to shame twenty-eight Cheshire cats. And a few emoticons. "You can't actually be using the battles of a fellow family member to gamble against her." So saying, she turned to Tyki and whispered, "FIFTY says the rooster wins."

Tyki was about to point out this extremely blatant show of hypocrisy when he came to a realization. Evidently, this kid had never seen Lulubell seriously ticked off.... "You're on", he said to his niece, beginning to grin but stopping himself, putting on instead an extremely delicate and polite and refined and civilized smile on such a level of sophistication that the twins would never manage in the Earl's lifetime and that was saying something, those brats, and no he wasn't being biased or anything, darn it.

Jasdevi began to snicker amongst themselves, provoking him into...raising an eyebrow. See, he was civilized! Sophisticated! Anyone else would've...well, anyway. "What?" he inquired. And he didn't even ask, he inquired! "I take a good business opportunity when I see one, thank you very much." Ha, he was so refined.

"Evidently, you haven't seen what sort of things they gave it", Road replied rather sagaically (and his stomach sank. This proved the steroids thing, PROVED IT BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT DARNIT!), producing a lollipop from absolutely freaking nowhere (though David had once suggested that she opened a gate to some random candy stash in some random lonely and remote place in the middle of nowhere nine thousand miles away, and Jasdero the possibility that she just hid them in her skirt).

Another piece of silverware exploded on the floor, but as it was one of Skin's many, MANY sporks, which took up so much room everything else was stuffed into a dark, dark, possibly emo corner somewhere, and he was so stupid he wouldn't notice if half of them disappeared and the Earl was, for some distant, long-forgotten reason, the only thing keeping them from trashing the whole lot, no one even twitched. Lulubell, however, promptly trod on it, and the shriek that followed could be heard from China, for it had been a particularly pointy part.

Seeing his chance, the fowl promptly catapulted himself at Lulubell's head. She screeched again and jumped out of the way as quickly as possible, nicking his face as she did so. At this, Jasdevi immediately set to yells of horror, though for David it was mostly because the blood was going to soak into the feathers and Jasdero was going to make him help clean it up. As if he had the time to go around washing the faces of chickens, seriously, that just sounded creepy.

It was at this point that several things happened at once, mostly due to the twins crying out. Firstly, Lulubell and the rooster finally noticed their audience and looked up in shock and indignance at this CLEAR violation of _privacy_. Secondly, Road hit the twins over the head for this CLEAR violation of...not screaming RIGHT IN HER EAR, seriously. Thirdly, Tyki promptly acquired a migraine the size of Skin. (Which is to say, larger than Japan.) And lastly, a shadow fell upon the four Noah in the doorway.

A very...large shadow.

All four looked up, rather alarmed, into the smiling, yet evidently malovelent face of the Earl, coffee in hand (more like fist), extremely grumpy in the morning as he had not yet had his breakfast of schoolchildren yet (fried and lightly salted!) and the path to the kitchen was in a state of blockade.

They all scattered immediately, even Lulubell and the chicken, because even the least intelligent of all bird species knows potentially instantaneous death when he sees it.

The event had not been mentioned again until two weeks had passed, when Tyki had cleared his throat in an extremely delicate and polite and...aww, screw it. He'd asked Lulubell why she'd even gotten into a fight with a chicken in the first place.

Road hadn't found him until four days later, stuffed unconscious into a spare closet of the Earl's.


End file.
